Posts by linger
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@James – Or the scene in You’ve Got Mail:
Frank Navasky [ to Joe Fox ] : Tell me something: really, how do you sleep at night?
Patricia Eden [ interrupting ] : I use a wonderful over-the-counter drug, Ultradorm. Don’t take the whole thing, just half, and you'll wake up without even the tiniest hangover. -
There's still a few days left to listen to last week's episode of The Human Zoo on BBC Radio 4, on the subject of why people get into scandals.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Hebe,
Given that the list also includes
Paris Garters
… and, a name not to be attempted while drunk,
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate
… I suspect Geisel probably knew what he was doing.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Steve Cook,
nzcams
Dear gods, tell me that’s not Slater’s next venture.
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So he’s doing it for free?
(Or perhaps: So what is he getting out of it?)
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Steven Peters,
No: it is a coterie of panty-sniffing right-wing conspirators who are responsible for pushing His Worship's libido as a political deal-breaker. The whole affair (in all senses) is really only the business of the individual people directly concerned.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
(..."Oh, I thought Truth had folded."
"Yes, it was folded into the Herald ...") -
Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Kumara Republic,
to buy Chuang’s silence
I'm confused: Do you mean to “ensure exclusivity” rather than to “buy silence”? The situation described seems more coercion than reward.
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Hard News: Sick with Anger, in reply to Bart Janssen,
the receiver gets to choose what is offensive or not
… to the receiver. Certainly, the receiver’s feelings are real, and should be acknowledged, but such feelings aren’t normally just based on the wording itself, but also on the perceived speaker’s intent. Of course, it is often less clear what the actual intent is, and that’s where I think there’s scope for Sasha’s point above about the dance of meaning.
- Some usage, looked at carefully in context, is not intended to offend, but may still provoke a strong emotional response.
- Conversely, some usage is surely intended to offend, even if not using “offensive words” as such.
There are examples of both on the previous page of the thread.* ducks for cover from flying bullet points *
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Speaker: TPP: This is a fight worth joining, in reply to Russell Brown,
NZ’s exports to China have trebled since the signing of the China-NZ FTA in early 2008. See the graph. That FTA was and is crucial to our economy.
… although the impact on NZ’s balance of trade is less clear-cut, as NZ imports from China have also risen since the FTA, though not in the same proportion. Long-term the FTA will be less positive for NZ (our exports to China being largely low-value-added bulk commodity products whose market price may be expected to increase proportionally less than the higher-value-added goods we currently import from China).
There is a tendency for Ministers championing trade agreements to focus only on the potential for increased exports; but that’s at best misleading. FTAs don’t automatically change the balance of trade, unless there is some real initial imbalance of trade restrictions that is reduced under the terms of the agreement (which, arguably, was achieved, in NZ’s favour, in the China deal). If that does not happen, an FTA is essentially only a catalyst, allowing increased trade volumes in both directions without affecting the balance point.
As described in this post, TPP looks like it could have a nett effect of imposing extra trade restrictions on NZ, changing the balance point to NZ’s detriment – but without much more detail, that’s really difficult to assess.